Will to Intervene (W2I) launches new Canadian report to prevent genocide

1.W2I releases report, Mobilizing the Will to Intervene

21-22 September 2009

The Will to Intervene Project (W2I) is an initiative, developed by the Professor Frank Chalk, Director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Right Studies, and Leut. General Roméo Dallaire, retired UN general who led the failed Rwanda mission, to assist the Canadian government and Civil Society in operationalizing responsibility to protect. Recently, W2I published a report, Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership and Action to Prevent Mass Atrocities, which aims to assist in the implementation of RtoP by giving specific recommendations to the government as well as media, NGOs, and other groups and citizens interested in preventing genocide.

On 21 September 2009, the report was released in the United States at an event hosted by the United States Institute of Peace. Professor Chalk introduced the Report’s findings. This was followed by a panel discussion with, among others, Leut. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, John Prendergast, founder of the Enough Project, and former senior U.S. government officials of the proposals mentioned in the Report as well as present challenges the norm’s implementation faces.

On 22 September 2009,the report was released in Canada at the National Press Gallery in Ottawa. Speakers included Prof. Chalk and Leut. Gen. Dallaire, as well as retired UN ambassador, Robert Fowler, former New Democratic Party leader and founder of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, Ed Broadbent, and Senator Hugh Segal. The report was also released to the Canadian Parliament on 1 October 2009.

The following are Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire’s remarks during an interview with CTV Power Play’s Tom Clark regarding the launch of the new report on genocide prevention, Mobilizing the Will to Intervene.

(…) We are building upon the responsibility to protect doctrine, which goes through a process which the whole of the UN agreed to and Canada offered in 2001 and 2005…And what we're doing is we're operationalizing it. And in the responsibility to protect, the last, last inextremist element is the use of force. What we're saying is that there's a whole series of soft instruments to prevent, and then if you go into a scenario that's decaying, you still have other instruments of political use, diplomatic use, blockades and the like, and then, if necessary, force. But the force we speak of is not a force to go in and blast the place apart. (…)

As a member of the genocide prevention advisory group to the secretary general, we have, with Desmond Tutu, we have been trying to articulate [when force is necessary, and how to use it] and the instruments, the diplomatic instruments, the new generation instruments to be able to go in and influence before the catastrophic failure gets bad. And that is the essence of the study. We're launching this whole new generation of how to solve problems before they go catastrophic. (…)